Things are slowly getting back to the normal abnormal with the hooligans. With temperatures in the eighties, bumble bees are out and Blackie has worn herself out chasing them, and Patches has been busy chasing the shadows. Blackie has reminded me of Gomer Pyle sticking to Andy like glue after Andy saved his life.  Every time I turn around I’m tripping over her.  She was like that after her surgery and was getting where she wasn’t so clingy, now she’s like Velcro again.  

 

She had a something dead smell and I thought she might have gangrene under all that thick fur.  Trying to check a wiggle worm energizer bunny Blackie is just about impossible, so while she was eating, which is the only time she is still, I took the scissors to her back end.  Apparently the dead smell was from either the snake or the rat she killed as I didn’t find any infection.  Patches is still not doing her Trigger impersonation at feeding time yet. She really looks awful now with her back half cropped like these kids that wear their hair pointy and spiked  all over their head.  If you remember one of the hooligan’s New Year’s resolutions was for Patches to stop doing her Trigger jumping, but we didn’t imagine that a shooting would make it happen.  

The weather here has been warmer than normal all winter. The last official day of winter we have record temperatures predicted.  We did have a brief snow storm in February that caused unexpected delays getting across the Tennessee River.  The saucer magnolias, star magnolias and daffodils are finishing up their bloom cycles. Dogwoods, flowering almond and silverbells are starting to open.  Iris should be blooming shortly.  We had a warm winter like this in 2007 and had snow and a hard freeze in April which killed corn, strawberries and blueberries and fruit on the trees. I hope this year won’t be a repeat of that year. 

 

 

One thing I know is that fire ants are going to be bad this year.  I got into them several times today.   My neighbors already have their corn planted.  My heirloom tomatoes are up. I’ve planted my favorite Cherokee purple again this year along with Black Russian, Giant Pink Belgium and Mortgage Lifter.   I had tried the Mortgage Lifter a couple of years ago and it didn’t do well, but neither did anything else in the garden due to the extended weeks of 100 degree temperatures.  I planted two or three seeds per cup, and the germination rate looks good.  I’m one that I can’t kill off the extras.  I divide when they get a little bigger.   If they all do well, I’ll have enough tomatoes to feed an army.

 

 

My flower beds need cleaning and mulching and grass mowing, but first I need to get new underground wire in the ground to keep the hooligans in.  I tilled my garden area and pulled the tiller off and put the middle buster on my John Deere. I decided to install the PTO adapter someone on tractorbynet forum recommended to make it easier to get implements back on the PTO but I had bought one with the wrong threads.  So Monday it’s back to the Co-op to exchange it.  The PTO on my 3032E won’t turn in order to get equipment attached and I’ll spend an hour trying to get something attached, so I hope it works.  It is a community forum of tractor owners and it’s a great place to get answers to your tractor problems, or to help another owner if you’ve had the same issue. 

 

I dug a trench around the lower forty to bypass the section of wire that has corroded and put the wire that I had lying on top of the ground in the trench and used a rock rack to pull the soil back into the trench. Later I’ll get the landscaping box on and try to smooth it out a little better before mowing.  Next section to get in the ground is the front yard.  I had used a flat bladed hoe to install the last one, but the zoysia is now so thick, a hoe or shovel won’t cut it and I had to use the middle buster.  As I tried to cut just an inch deep trench I could get a stable cut, it was either too high or pealing off huge chunks of zoysia like you would use when sodding a yard.  After getting off and putting the sod back down, it occurred to me that I had cracked the blade trying to dig up a rather large privet bush last year and hadn’t replaced it yet. 

 

Blackie was busy looking for lizard that was in a stack of plant containers by the barn.  I’m not sure if it got away, I hope, but I had to restack the pots twice. Then she turned her attention to digging up a field rat and soon had her quarry.   As evening came Levi started picking at her and she chased him around and up and down the pile of wood chips the power company had dumped.  At the end of the day she was limping on one of her bird shot filled back legs.  Patches was busy fussing at the Black Angus calves and continuing her ongoing feud with the filly next door and sitting staring at something across the dry creek.   

 

Since it was St. Patrick’s Day weekend, I’ll leave you with a couple of Irish Blessings: 

 An Irish Prayer 

May God give you...
For every storm, a rainbow,
For every tear, a smile,
For every care, a promise,
And a blessing in each trial.
For every problem life sends,
A faithful friend to share,
For every sigh, a sweet song,
And an answer for each prayer. 

An Old Irish Blessing 

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons
bring the best to you and yours!  

I had a senseless act to happen to my hooligans.  Someone chased them around a hay field two weekends and shot my Blackie with a shotgun. I'd been working on my underground fence for a week trying to find a break somewhere on 3.5 acres.  The old transmitter wasn’t giving a break in the line signal, but Patches would be waiting for me by the side of the road each day when I came home from work.  I decided to replace it, and as soon I plugged it in, it alarmed that a break in the line existed.  I spent days digging up connections and bypassing each section with a new wire.  Each time I bypassed a section and plugged back up the transmitter, a break in the line alarm was received, so off to repeat the process on another section.   I had one more section that I planned to check Saturday.  The break had to be in this section. 

When I went outside to get the paper Saturday morning, Patches and Levi were just laying in the driveway looking forlorn. Usually all three act like it’s been months since they’ve seen me, even if it’s only been five or ten minutes. I couldn't find Blackie and rode the main roads looking for her. Before going down into the creek bottom I decided I needed to bypass the last section of wire trying to find the bad area so the other two wouldn’t follow me.  While I walked down to the end of the property I heard Blackie bark at me from across the creek. I told her to come home and she just sat there with her tongue hanging out looking at me. I knew something was wrong and started back to the house. She started continuously barking.  I had to go through a couple of neighbor’s property to get to her.  When I got out she showed me she couldn't walk.  I called my veterinarian office telling the receptionist I think she had been shot and ran by the house to get my purse.  I didn’t think about changing my dirty jeans and torn up yard shoes.  I just wanted to get her some help. 

At first the vet thought one of her feet was broken. After taking X-rays, she came back in and said your first diagnosis was right and took me back to see them. She had 3 or 4 dozen shots in her.  She’s been on antibiotics, pain killers and something for the swelling since then.  From a dog that usually gives me a lot of trouble taking pills, she seems to perk up when I reach for the pill bottles.   Can dogs get hooked on pain killers? 

After we got home I went back to work on the fence checking the last section. I expected the fence to be working after bypassing this section, but it said that the remaining wire had a break, and all sections had been checked.  I then took a section of wire and laid it in a circle in the garage, and the box said there was a break in this short section also.  When I plugged in the box I used the electric cord from the old box, maybe the cords were different.  When I plugged in the cord, the transmitter wouldn’t even power up.  I had a bad transmitter out of the box.  I contacted Petsafe very irate asking if they are letting their customers do their quality control now instead of hiring someone.  After going back to the big box store and exchanging transmitters, the new one worked, but the collars were only working within a few inches of the wire instead of ten feet as before. 

So it was back to square one bypassing sections again.  The first section I bypassed, the transmitter was working.  This section was also the first one with the defective transmitter, so if the defective transmitter was working, I would have found the break the first of the week and my dogs wouldn’t have been across the creek to get terrorized. 

The company had recently started using a solid plastic coated wire instead of the multiple small stranded plastic coated wires that I had installed when I first installed my fence five years ago.  I had replaced a section last year along the creek with the new wire due to groundhogs, landscapers and this woman with a John Deere tractor and mad tiller. I noticed at that time several sections of the wire had corrosion issues and wondered if that was the reason a switch was made to the solid wire.  My next few off days will be spent replacing all of the old wire instead of just the corroded bad section.  In the lower forty, I can come in about 5 feet from the old wire and dig a trench with my middle buster.  The part around the house, I’m digging up the old wire with a shovel.  You can’t place new wire close to an old wire, as the signal to the collars will be cancelled. 

Patches hasn’t been doing her Trigger impersonation since Blackie was shot and was favoring one back leg.  I took her to the veterinarian to get her yearly shots and tests and asked them to check her out. What was so funny, here I'm telling them when we checked in that I think she's been shot also as she's having problems getting around and she then crawls up on the benches around this dog and foal statue and then crawls up with the bronze.  My suspicions was confirmed, she also had a few buckshot in her. 

Next week my income tax money goes to replacing sky lights that the contractor installed upside down and threw away the outside brackets, and also sealing up the valley where the porch comes into the main roof at an improper angle.   I had planned to use next year's refund to replace my garage doors.  Last night while closing down the door on the side where I’m over wintering my plants, I heard a crunch and glass breaking.  The cheap doors the contractor installed had come out of the track again, this time it was fatal.  A few years back I had the doors braced to keep them from wobbling so I could get a few more years out of them.   

There is one bright spot, my daffodils, star magnolias and plum trees are blooming. Spring is getting close.  The daffodils that I saved from the old home sites are blooming. I’ll add to them again this year. In a few years it will be wall to wall daffs.  The piece of Bridal wreath spirea twigs that I also dug up at one of the old home sites is blooming.  Nothing as hardy as the old antiques.